With apologies to Flanders and Swann (The Gnu Song, if you must know), this forum is for all those "Hi", "Howdy" and "This is who I am" messages. If you're introducing yourself, please start a new topic (unless your somebody else's alter-ego, in which case seek professional help)

Hello all! I've been lurking about for a little while and thought it was about time to introduce myself.

I'm a relative novice at modelling - as a kid I helped my dad make an OO layout (a familiar story to many, I expect) and I was a Warhammer 40K player for a while, but college and then university took me out of the hobby and I've got quite out of practice.Roll on my quarter-life crisis... one-third-life crisis...? After a few years out of uni the railway bug has bitten again and I have a hankering to build another train set of my own.

For various reasons including limited space, happy memories on the Bure Valley Railway, and wanting to be a special snowflake I have made up my mind to model minimum gauge. Hopefully no Gn15 stalwarts will be offended when I say I'm looking at O9!My personal challenges are to make a layout that can fit on a 13"x22" Ikea shelving unit and to make rolling stock that'll run on it. It's very early days right now but I reckon that keeping track of my progress on the forums will help keep me from the curse of planning everything and building nothing.

In real life I'm a Southerner living in happy exile in Birmingham. Having done some stints in preservation, both with the Mid-Hants and with Mainline Steam in NZ, I've started working on 305 mm scale train sets again as an electrification engineer. If you choose to blame me for delays and line closures it will only make me feel important!

So, that's me. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in and getting to know you all

Welcome Nye,09 is fine with me. I think most of the people here "rubber gauge" and have projects going over many scale/gauge combinations.Minimum gauge is minimum gauge, and size doesn't matter.cheersGeoff

"I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member." -- Groucho Marx

So, first steps... I got myself a little Arnold N gauge starter set (Treno Merci) and have set it up on the dining table. Very satisfying! I think my next step is to buy and have a play with some kits and make some properly sized rolling stock.